Shake Appeal AW09.

This blog wasn’t ever intended as a platform to fuse fashion and film but what with so much of what would have previously been blogging time now given over to film and its accompanying theories, everything’s melding into one. And, I guess, that’s no bad thing since there’s always been considerable crossover between the two disciplines.

Currently, I should be penning an essay on exoticism in Latino and Latin American cinema (the exotic excess of Carmen Miranda anyone?) but I’ve gone the way of respite rather than research with the help of Shake Appeal‘s AW09 lookbook. I’m not feeling entirely guilty, though, since the whole affair has got something of the exotic ‘Other’ about it. Shot with what look to be tropical gardens and palace-esque structures as backgrounds, the lookbook caters both to the escapist and sartorialist.

Founded by London Instituto Marangoni-grad, Chanachai Ohpanayikool, this Bangkok-based label combines an easy casualness with elements which are guaranteed to simultaneously smarten- and toughen-up. The pairing of a breton tee with fairly civilian rolled-up khakis, might seem at first to lack anything of particular interest but its this nonchalance which appeals the most, I reckon, and anyway, with the addition of grey suede deck shoes, there’s not much to criticise. Ohpanayikool gets dressier with a striped cowl-neck and some greed-inducing nylon outerwear. Granted, it’s not the clothing equivalent of a major scientific breakthrough but it is wearable and then surely worthwhile…